Shredder

Hi all ,has anyone any knowledge on garden shredders,iv looked on the net and it seems people seem to disagree on which one for branches and which one for greener waste,they seem to clog up apparently,anyway i need one for normal garden composting ,ie: current bush pruning s and i suppose the heaviest would be the Hydrangea trimmings,i wish to shred everything then compost it ASAP.any ideas please Alan4711

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I have an Alko shredder which is noisy, but pretty reliable for branches and bits. It can clog if the stuffs too wet.When the blades broke,( I lent it to a neighbour!!!) I bought a Bosch quiet shredder, which has a rotary screw type blade which cuts woody twigs into chunks. Its very good for prunings and straight things like brambles. However its useless for softer stuff and bits so I managed to get new blades and a new hopper top for the Alko.

I might need a bigger garage for all the equipment.

You don't stop doing new things because you get old, you get old because you stop doing new things.

We had one at last house Alan - it was a fairly cheap one from DIY centre- about £100. It was very slow- most stuff was no thicker than about 2cm diameter- and we'd have been there all day with the amount of stuff we had to chop up so we didn't really use it much. It did clog a bit with soft stuff too so we just hand chopped that and put it on compost heap. Think we'd have needed a heavier duty one like fidget mentions.

Hi Alan, I also have an Alko which works well. They all occasionally block with too much wet stuff but find that mixing about 20% wet/green stuff with 80% dry stuff or branches during shredding keeps it clear. That's also the ideal ratio for making compost as it happens.

Fidgetbones - tell me about it. I have a garage with no room for a car now, a shed and I still don't have enough room for everything - next project is building a small wooden storage thing to keep my cement mixer and shredder in..

Yeah right. I had to ask for it back,and as soon as I switched it on it was obvious something was wrong. He totally denied there was a problem when he had it. How you can lose half of one of those blades and not notice it I don't know. Ithink they were trying to put bits of 2 by 4 through it.

I'm a lot less likely to lend equipment out now.

You don't stop doing new things because you get old, you get old because you stop doing new things.

Its very noisy, but the only way to get rid of a lot of prunings. Mixed with grass they rot into compost in a year. I am currently filling 2 brown bins a fortnight with weeds that I won't compost. I have one big bonfire a year. The neighbours get stroppy if I have more.

You don't stop doing new things because you get old, you get old because you stop doing new things.

Wish we could have a bonfire, the bylaws are very firm about that - wonder if I could get away with one of those dustbin tye incinerators - probably not. Indeed, so much stuff coming out that you would not want to put back on the garden, composted or not - that's I why won't buy council compost, I'm not convinced they get it hot enough either.